Nitish Tipnis is Director, Marketing and Sales at Hover Automotive India (HAI), Nissan India’s Sales & Marketing partner. In this role, he heads all activities related to sales, marketing, after sales, training and dealer development at Hover Automotive India. Tipnis has an experience of 24 years across marketing, sales, operations, corporate planning and new business development in the consumer durables industry. He started his career at Videocon and also headed Reliance Digital before his stint as President of Future Group Electronics Store Ezone. In an exclusive interview with India Digital Review, Tipnis shares his views and thoughts about digital marketing in India.

How does the digital medium - both internet and mobile figure in Nissan India’s plans to reach out to consumers?

Nissan’s target consumers evaluate and research about a lot of things on the internet. There are a lot of deployments Nissan India has been doing ever since we started our marketing initiatives on this medium. For example, we have more than 600,000 fans on Facebook and that is very huge.

There are two large activations that we have done on internet with the view to how we engage the younger generation with Nissan. We have a property called the Nissan Student Brand Manager, where we reach out to around 300 professional higher education institutes, get them together to do a lot of project woks, incubate them for about 6 months. After that we have a selection round, where a panel of renowned dignitaries select the best performers from every region and take them to the second round. This initiation and discussion of this entire program is done on the internet properties. Mentors have online chats lasting for about 6 hours on specific days with these student managers.

Secondly, Ranbir Kapoor is the brand ambassador for Nissan Micra. We launched the Nissan Micra ‘Star is Born’ campaign, which is an online campaign to create a film. People were given opportunity to file in their entries and get selected to act along with Ranbir Kapoor. This itself got about more than 120,000 entries, out of which, we selected the finalists and they participated in the film called Star is Born, which was again only released on the internet. Now we are taking the film of television. Normally people follow things on internet after doing the first blast on traditional media, but we are flipping the model here.

These are the major initiatives that we have done on digital. In addition to that, we have got properties, comparisons, moments of truth happening and we also have people dedicated here in the organisation who are only following our interactions with the consumers through our websites.

Digital medium might just work well for SUV buyers who most certainly will also be online consumers too. But for some small car buyers, it would not make much sense. So how would you penetrate in those segments?

I don’t believe that small car buyers are not on the internet. Rather, I believe that small car buyers today, largely would be the biggest audience who follow the internet. If you look at who is the small car buyer, it is someone who has just stepped out and become a nuclear family or someone who has just started working. Today, car is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. So, talking about hatchbacks, I would say that around 80 per cent of the audience would do the initial research on the internet.

However, there is this whole dichotomy about there is a businessman and someone who is not so savvy on the internet. Let’s not forget that the internet is not just about a PC, it is about the digital convergence or the 3-sceen technology that includes your laptop/desktop/tablet,  second being the mobile and the third being the TV. TV is also a part of the digital inclusion and in a couple of years we will see the convergence happening anyway. So even if look at the businessman who is savvy on the smart phone, he is also handshaking information on the two other screens and it is all about how could we make it meaningful for him to exchange information about our product and company. So today, he may be going to one for of a digital screen and hence we definitely need presence.

In a category like automobile, visual brand building works the best. With newer forms on visual content such as video and apps coming up on internet, how does Nissan plan to leverage these?

We are already in the process of launching various apps. We already have some apps on the tablet. We also have microsites for Micra and Sunny. As I said, the digital medium has to be intrusive, not obtrusive. It is also not about the consumer wanting to go somewhere; rather it’s about how do I as a brand get the consumer involved.

For example, we are doing a lot of activations with our members on Facebook. A lot of conversation is right now happening on the Micra Friends’ Trips. People who have been using the Micra have been posting stories about the trips they have made with the car, involving their friends. All the stories are about how people travelled from one place to another; stories about Nissan service centres; how the Micra looks smaller but is actually 70% larger in headroom and shoulder space in comparison to any other car in the same category. This is how we are having affinity with the consumer. It is more than having a visual appeal with great commercials, because at the end of the day, the consumer wants to know how the technology is going to be beneficial to him.

What answers do you seek from your digital advertising agencies and digital media partners while promoting your brand on internet?

There are a couple of things when we look at internet advertising. As far as possible, we avoid using rich media and reduce our dependence on flash. Because at the end of the day it is not only about just a computer, rather it is about how things will look on different screens. Secondly, we ensure that based on the IP, we recognise what is the device that the users are using and make the best possible resolution available for them. Thirdly, our motto is to avoid multiple screens and pop-ups and follow a simple way of marketing our product.

Internet is said to be a measurable medium. What is your take on this? Have we overdone the measurement quotient and made this medium hard to understand for the brand marketers?

Things are evolving and every marketer is working on their own strategy of quantifying the cost of acquisition. In our case, most of our communication gets followed up through an enquiry or a request for a test drive. We have a lead management system in place. Whatever foray we have on the internet, the final entry for an enquiry or a lead is always through one funnel which is the central engine. So we sort of get a close understanding on our cost of acquisition.

How do you see Nissan India’s digital spends moving this year?

Our total spends on digital media is in the region of about Rs 16 crore to Rs 18 crore.

How do you see your marketing objectives aligning with what the online medium offers from two years down the line?

Over a period of time, we will definitely increase our dependence on digital and in fact, lower our mediums, readership and time spent on a TV channel is going down. Digital is here to stay and we are not restricting ourselves to the tablet or a PC.